09:00 We tumble out of the shower but come downstairs to find Lois left the "fish drawer" of our chest freezer out on the worktop overnight - damn! Poor Lois spends most of the morning deciding what we can salvage from the disaster: luckily the drawer was not as full as it sometimes is.
This involves:
1. throwing away the raw prawns
2. making a fish pie from a "fish pie mix" of white fish, salmon and haddock, with tomatoes, plus potato slices which we unfortunately burn while we talk to our daughter Alison on the phone after lunch.
3. cooking 3 breaded fillets, two of which we eat for lunch today
4. chopping the heads off some Cornish sardines, gutting them and frying them - combined with tinned tomatoes to eat for tomorrow's lunch.
Needless to say, all the other things we have planned for this morning fly out the window - oh dear!
Some things we decided we could safely refreeze, or cook and freeze - let's hope we're not making any rash decisions here - we want to avoid the fate of local man Don Turnbee, who hit world headlines recently after a bad reaction to a whopping "whaler sandwich" that he ordered at an area fast food restaurant (source: Onion News) .
[photo] Don Turnbee composes himself moments after
finishing his lunchtime Whaler, a processed fish-product sandwich distributed
by a fast-food restaurant chain.
"According to sources inside the seating booth section, a Whaler consumed during Monday's lunch-hour rush is "not sitting too good" inside area man Don Turnbee.
The "Whaler," a popular, processed fish-product sandwich distributed by a well-known national restaurant chain, was purchased by Turnbee at one of the fast-food giant's many convenient area locations.
"Urggh…" a visibly ill-at-ease Turnbee said, tenderly patting
his distressed abdominal region. "Urrp… Whoo, boy…"
The sandwich, originally some form of aquatic life that was netted; chopped; flash-frozen into a rectanguloid; deep-fried and breaded in batter; shipped across the country on lorries; and stored for several days, was finally microwaved to perfection before not sitting too good at its newest location within Turnbee.
"Man, oh man," he added. "I shouldn't have put on that extra tartar sauce."
The Whaler episode marks the 15th incident of mild gastrointestinal distress in Turnbee's recent dietary history. It comes on the heels of last weekend's media-dubbed "Pizza Roll Sunday," during which he felt slightly gassy and required several Rolaids tablets, as well as a 12-ounce bottle of Kaopectate purchased at a late-night Conveni-Weenie Gas 'N' Snak, which Turnbee visited in an overcoat and pyjamas.
Poor Dan, he's known locally as a bit of a veteran of minor stomach discomforts - and I remember he came in for a lot of ribbing from neighbours after this story got into the press: large fish sandwiches don't agree with everybody, but certainly the restaurant concerned appeared not to have been sued over the incident, which is good news for local businesses generally. No area wants a reputation for possible food poisoning hanging over a popular area restaurant, that's for sure!
13:00 We speak on the phone to Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, together with Ed and their three children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12), and Isaac (10).
Ali says she is happy that the County Council has at last got its act together and removed some dangerous trees partly blocking the road outside the family's house.
flashback to 11 days ago: the road blocked by a partially fallen tree
Ali says they're going to be looking at a school over the county boundary in Liphook as a possible secondary school for Isaac, and maybe for Rosalind also, as she isn't happy at her current school.
Isaac is attracted to the idea of studying foreign languages: language-learning has always been a bit of an obsession with me, so it's gratifying to think this trait may be coming out in one of my descendants.
The school in Liphook (Hampshire) features "immersive" language learning in a choice of French, Spanish or Mandarin.
The odd thing is that whichever of these languages you choose, you are likely to study any "non-core" subjects in that language, and not in English. Imagine PE (Physical Education) sessions conducted in Mandarin - what madness! How can that possibly work????!!!!!
Let's hope this isn't just an opportunity for the Chinese to brainwash our younger generation by subliminally putting favourable thoughts about Xi Jinping into their minds - my god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!
Nevertheless Ali and Ed and the children are looking forward to looking round the new school soon, so we'll have to see. The jury's still out on this one, no doubt about that!
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class. I watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary about the eccentric Scottish poet, Ivor Cutler.
Ivor Cutler was a weird man, to put it mildly. He must have been the only person ever to have been chucked out of the RAF in World War II for his "excessive dreaminess".
I became a devotee of Ivor Cutler's weird, nonsensical poems and lugubrious narratives as a teenager in the early 1960's and I used to record his late-night radio programmes on my reel-to-reel tape recorder - they were broadcast on a school night - and I would listen to them the following evening.
Various other people became fans over Cutler's long career, including John Peel the progressive pop DJ, and also Paul McCartney and John Lennon, who gave him a part in their film "The Magical Mystery Tour" playing a lugubrious conductor on the coach.
I especially liked Cutler's odd, random narratives, including his alleged reminiscences of his childhood in Glasgow, spoken in his beautiful, if ridiculously exaggerated, Scottish accent.
"At midnight on Friday, mother dragged our tousled bodies out of the cupboard where we had been busy sleeping, hitting us and smiling by turns"
Or recollections of the family's "nature walks" :
"Father became instructive "There's a thistle!", or "Look! A patch of grass!"
I remember in break-time at school I once sketched a picture of one of Cutler's odd creations: "the invisible boo-boo bird", sketch much admired by my classmates. Sadly I no longer have a copy of my sketch - sob, sob!!!
And sadly, I no longer have the tape recordings I made of his radio programmes, but I remember many of his songs, sung to the accompaniment of his soft harmonium. My favourite song was the one about the sh chi insect.
I include here the only bit of the lyrics that I remember:
"Look the sh-chi! The friendly little insect. He goes shchi-ing the whole day long."
21:00 Lois emerges from her Bible Class and we watch the second part of an interesting 3-part series on Boswell and Johnson's 18th century Scottish travels, which English comedian Frank Skinner and his Scottish travelling companion Denise Mina, attempt to recreate, using the two men's accounts of the trip as their guide.
Tonight the duo visit the site of the Battle of Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil, where protestant English and Lowland Scottish forces defeated the rebellious Catholic Jacobite highlanders, thus ending the rebellion of 1745. After this crushing victory at Culloden, the Government in London prohibited many expressions of Scottish independence and traditions: the use of the Gaelic language, plus the kilt, the tartan and other elements of traditional Scottish dress.
What Lois and I didn't know was that the Government made an exception to the above: it was okay to dress Scottish etc if you were a member of one of the King's Highland Regiments. Surprisingly this led to a rush to join the colours - from only one Highland Regiment in the 1740's the number grew to 20 such regiments in the course of the following decades.
And by the time of Boswell and Johnson's trip in the 1770's, Johnson noted that the highland lairds and other aristocracy had become much like their English counterparts, which is a bit sad in a way - but such is life!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!
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